“We were chanting, we crossed the street and then they put the banners up. Police stepped back and gave us a lot of time to do our work because we made them exhausted,” recalled Michelle Brown who spent who spent her UNC undergrad years as one of the vocal leaders of the campaign to get rid of Silent Sam.

Now she’s one of many Tar Heel graduates who returned Tuesday to celebrate what she considers one of their movements’ greatest achievements — the statue’s toppling.